We try to be better people. Every year we make fresh vows to eat healthier, scroll less, spend more time nurturing our inner child by taking up watercolours and reading books about foraging. And it works, for a while. We post our Strava achievements online and tell our followers how “sorry” we are to reveal that eating vegetables and not binge drinking makes you feel “good, actually”. Then June arrives. The adverts begin to appear on our timelines and in train stations; 10-foot digital billboards of Britain’s most waxed humans winking suggestively in bikinis. The concept of free time begins to wither before our eyes as we resign six hours a week to watching future ambassadors for Gymshark pretend to be unlucky in love. By the time that jingle hits the airwaves, like Pavlov’s bell for Twitter addicts – brrr br br br br BREE br br – escape is futile. Another summer – another eight weeks of Love Island to lead us astray.
As hundreds of elected representatives poured into the House of Commons on Monday evening to affirm or renounce their confidence in Boris Johnson, 11 random twentysomethings rode into Mallorca on jeeps to ascend to the position of national celebrity. At the exact hour the leadership of the United Kingdom teetered on the rocks, the top trending name on social media was Curtis Pritchard, a man famous for saying he likes to be “the person who gets up and makes everyone a coffee so that everyone is ready for the morning” three years ago. It was a strange contrast of events: the unfortunate cynicism of real-life politics meets the overblown fervour of semi-scripted entertainment. Does it make sense? Not one bit. Am I here for it anyway, despite proclaiming that Love Island was “over” not 12 months ago? Apparently yes.
